red
hair and white eyelashes, Mr. Hawkehurst could scarcely have treated
her with a more friendly indifference, a more brotherly familiarity.

Unhappily this line of conduct, which is perhaps the wisest and most
honourable plan that a man can pursue when he finds himself thrown into
a dangerously familiar association with a beautiful and unprotected
woman, is the very line of proceeding which a beautiful woman can never
bring herself to forgive. A chivalrous stiffness, a melancholy dignity,
a frozen frigidity, which suggest the fiery bubbling of the lava flood
beneath the icy surface,--these are delightful to the female mind. But
friendly indifference and fraternal cordiality constitute the worst
insult that can be offered to her beauty, the most bitter outrage upon
the majesty of her sex.

"I suppose it will be midnight before papa comes home, Mr. Hawkehurst,"
Diana said abruptly, when her companion had finished his cigar, and had
thrown the end of it over the balcony.

"Past midnight more likely, Miss Paget. May I ask how I have become Mr.
Hawkehurst all of a sudden, when for the last three years I have been
usually known as Valentine--or Val?"

The girl turned her head with a gesture in which the carelessness of
his own manner was imitated. She stole a rapid look at him as she
answered, "What does it matter whether I call you by one name or
another?"

"What does anything matter? I believe Mr. Toots was an unconscious
philosopher. There is nothing in the world of any consequence, except
money. Go and look at those poor devils yonder, and you will see what
that is worth," he cried, pointing to the lighted Kursaal; "there you
behold the one great truth of the universe in action. There is nothing
but money, and men are the slaves of money, and life is only another
name for the pursuit of money. Go and look at beauty yonder fading in
the light and heat; at youth that changes to age before your eyes; at
friendship which turns to hate when the chances of the game are with my
friend and against me. The Kursaal is the world in little, Diana; and
this great globe of ours is nothing but a gigantic gaming-table--a
mighty temple for the worship of the golden calf."

"Why do you imitate those people yonder, if you despise them so
heartily?"

"Because I am like them and of them. I tell you that money is the
beginning and end of all things. Why am I here, and why is my life made
up of baseness and lies? Because my father wa